In its few days of glory each year, when heavy with fresh, fragrant, pea-type flowers, few climbing plants are more spectacular.
Shared for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Flower of the Day: Crocus
Rosa ‘Tranquillity’ After Dusk
“You live a normal life and it’s quite difficult to realise that this normal life is coming to an end.”
– Man in Ukraine, BBC interview, 24th February 2022
An Oddness of Lady Slipper Orchids
Becky is asking for odd squares throughout February and I believe that these lady slipper orchids qualify.
‘Lady slipper’ is the name familiarly used for orchids in the Cypripedioideae family. Popular plants, they appeal to gardeners and photographers because they play infinite variations on a well-known tune. Continue reading “An Oddness of Lady Slipper Orchids”
Bramble or Blackberry: Would a Fruit by Any Name Taste as Sweet?
If you want to know the difference between a bramble and a blackberry, you’ll find various definitions online:
- A bramble is a blackberry and vice versa.
- Blackberry is the fruit and bramble the bush.
- Bramble is wild (Rubus vulgaris) and blackberry (Rubus fruiticosus) is cultivated.
- Bramble is the northern name and blackberry the southern.
- A bramble is any rough, tangled, prickly shrub, usually in the genus Rubus.
- Some people combine the two to specify the type of fruit: blackberry bramble, raspberry bramble, loganberry bramble.
Continue reading “Bramble or Blackberry: Would a Fruit by Any Name Taste as Sweet?”
Hydrangea Flowers in October and November
My favourite thing about hydrangeas is the blend of colours on a single flower. So, while fresh flowers have a particular type of loveliness, in some ways hydrangeas improve when Autumn throws a restraining hand on the foliage, adding pink, purple and yellow where there was only green.
Continue reading “Hydrangea Flowers in October and November”
From Bud to Bloom to Hip: How a Wild Rose Sets Seed
Continue reading “From Bud to Bloom to Hip: How a Wild Rose Sets Seed”
Susan Rushton 